Chat commerce firm Clickatell has secured $91-million, about R1.4-billion, in oversubscribed series C funding for its US expansion and product acceleration plans.

Cape Town-founded and Silicon Valley-headquartered Clickatell, which has delivered double-digit profitable growth for several years, will use the series C capital to scale and expand in three key areas.

These include the accelerated development and innovation of its chat commerce offering, the expansion of its footprint in the US and the scaling of its sales and marketing efforts on the back of growing demand from leading brands.

The new capital will also allow Clickatell to significantly grow its skills and it has already earmarked 156 new engineering positions with a strong focus on boosting its African skills complement in the next few months.

“While expansion in the US is a high priority in this capital raise, Africa will remain a core market for us and one where our purpose of creating a better world for all through technology really shines through,” said Clickatell cofounder and CEO Pieter de Villiers.

The group aims to grow its already substantial market influence, as well as continue to invest in addressing the widening gap between the demand and supply of digital skills on the continent and encourage entrepreneurship and startup innovation.

Clickatell already works on industry-led initiatives such as SiMODiSA.org to support entrepreneurship across Africa through the Startup Act, as well as furthering the creation of future-proof jobs through the TechXit digital skills initiative.

“Africa has a wealth of talent and Clickatell will continue to work with both the public and private sectors to ensure that the potential, both of individuals and companies, can be realised,” said De Villiers, who is also chairperson of SiMODiSA.

“We look forward to working with businesses and financial institutions across the continent to enable chat commerce, the future of digital commerce and engagement. Soon, every consumer in Africa will engage family and friends through chat plus connect, interact and transact with the brands they love through their favourite chat platform.”

The accelerated development of Clickatell’s chat commerce offering will help businesses fast-track their move to digital commerce.

Chat commerce, a more than $80-billion addressable market, is viewed as the third big wave of digital commerce, following the e-commerce and application commerce eras, which De Villiers believes will create the most disruptive change for commerce since the arrival of the Internet.

Chat is the largest digital platform in the world, with 7.7-billion users compared with 4.7-billion Internet users, making it next to impossible for businesses to operate without communicating and transacting with consumers in chat channels.

“Chat commerce enables businesses to easily facilitate significantly improved customer experiences through chat, with the added benefit of being far more efficient for customers and operational costs,” said De Villiers.

“Clickatell is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the intersection between communications platform-as-a-service and commerce, offering a complete end-to-end chat commerce platform.”

Clickatell’s low / no-code, feature-rich chat commerce orchestration capability includes assisted (chat desk) and unassisted (bots) chat and secure payments capability in its recently launched Chat 2 Pay offering, he continued.

Clickatell serves more than 10 000 customers, many of which are Fortune 500 companies.

Investors now include Arrowroot Capital, Kennedy Lewis Investment Management, Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Endeavor Global and Harvest.

“We have a shared vision with Clickatell that brands will need to invest in chat commerce to transform their customer experience,” said Arrowroot Capital founder and managing partner Matt Safaii.

“With 93% of conversations that transpire on its chat commerce platform ending in a transaction, Clickatell is sure to continue to make waves in this growing sector. We are delighted to support them on their way to becoming the category-defining, global leader in chat commerce.”

“Endeavor is incredibly privileged to invest into Clickatell, one of the most admired and successful high-growth companies to emerge from South Africa,” said Endeavor South Africa MD Alison Collier.

Macquarie Capital acted as exclusive financial adviser and placement agent for Clickatell.